Battle Lines Are Shifting on Women in War

By ELAINE SCIOLINO, Special to The New York Times

Published: January 25, 1990

FORT HOOD, Tex.—
Many of the women on this Army post in central Texas were baffled and a bit annoyed to see Capt. Linda L. Bray lionized on television screens during the invasion of Panama. When Captain Bray led a military police unit into combat while conducting her mission, they insist, she was just doing her job.

''The American public,'' said Sgt. 1st Class Georgiana M. Cleverley, 31, a communications specialist and the mother of two, ''doesn't realize that there are these women soldiers who already put funny little things on and wear helmets and carry rifles and go out and do all these sorts of things you see G.I. Joe doing on television.''

The actions of Captain Bray and other female soldiers in Panama have reawakened a debate about the proper role for women in the military: specifically whether the services should exclude them from combat, and what is meant by combat.

Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney has said the Pentagon has no intention of dropping the combat exclusion of women, calling the current situation ''appropriate.'' Pentagon officials say any change in policy will have to come from Congress.

But 7 out of 10 Americans say women in the armed forces should be allowed to serve in combat units if they want to, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

Serving Operational Needs

Since 1973, when the United States changed from a conscripted force to a volunteer force and the military began to recruit women in large numbers, the military has sought to incorporate them in ways that serve operational needs and do not discriminate while also complying with the laws and regulations that bar combat jobs to women.

Many barriers have fallen, as military jobs are repeatedly reclassified. Women, who make up 10.8 percent of the armed forces, do more and more jobs that would expose them to risk in the event of war. And in modern warfare, the definition of combat itself has shifted, further blurring distinctions between combat and non-combat jobs.

The reaction to Captain Bray's mission in Panama illustrates contradictions in the laws and rules governing combat and the volatile nature of the issue. A Direct Combat Mission? Shortly after the invasion, the White House press spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, termed Captain Bray's mission an ''important military operation.'' But President Bush said at a news conference, ''These were not combat roles.''

And then Brig. Gen. Peter T. Berry, deputy director of military personnel management for the Army, said in an interview that while Captain Bray had not been sent on a direct combat mission, ''no one thinks she wasn't in combat.''

Barbara Bush went back and forth on the issue last week, first saying that women should be allowed to serve in combat if they are physically strong enough. But two days later, Mrs. Bush said her initial remarks were not clear, adding that women are not ''physically strong enough'' for military combat and their presence on battlefields would cause morale problems.

How the Military Women Feel

Such distinctions are lost on the Third Army Corps soldiers at Fort Hood. ''I've been in areas overseas where if a war started and the bad guys came across the border, my likelihood of survival at my communications site before the first bomb landed on top of my antenna was seven minutes,'' said Sergeant Cleverley. ''It's right up there at the front.''

Lieut. Col. Gary R. Stephens, headquarters commander for the Third Corps at Fort Hood, agreed: ''It's muddled, not like World War II when you had front lines. The only safe turf you have is what you're standing on. You find yourself making decisions about women with no clear guidelines.''

Women's role in the armed services has dramatically changed since the fall of 1983, when four Army military policewomen sent to Grenada just after the American invasion were promptly sent home by the commander of the 82d Airborne Division. A day and a half later, the situation was calm, and they were sent back to Grenada.

What They're Allowed to Do

In 1985, Colonel Stephens could not permanently assign a female helicopter pilot to a combat zone in El Salvador - not because she was not good enough, but because of the combat exclusion rule. ''I didn't want her helicopter to go down and her captured, which would be an embarrassment to the President,'' he said.

Today women are ready to launch nuclear ballistic missiles from capsules 65 feet underground. They serve on Air Force and Army missile crews in Europe, as Marine security guards at embassies abroad.

They are assigned to Navy sealift command ships, and they fill a variety of dangerous, theoretically non-combat roles, from aerial refueling in the 1986 Libya raid to making up 25 percent of the 1,000 crew members on the repair ship Acadia, which steamed into the Persian Gulf after an Iraqi plane struck the frigate Stark.

A full-page Army recruiting advertisement in the current Rolling Stone magazine shows a young Army woman, not in front of a word processor, but in a drab green helmet and fatigues, out in the field, a helicopter hovering in the background.